Tuesday, September 18, 2012

I came across this idea online today, mostly from someone's twitter feed making fun of the idea, but I think this is an absolutely darling idea, a little door for the Tooth Fairy! After a bit of googling I found a number of vendors on Etsy that carry these, but my favorite was from The Enchanted Door. It comes with this little door, a vial of fairy dust, a story about the tooth fairy you can read to your child at bed time, and a song to sing to your child before you go to sleep to let the Tooth Fairy know to come and collect the tooth.

I just imagine how cute it will be to mount this little door near the baseboard of Harper's room, near the nightstand and how big her eyes will be the first time the Tooth fairy comes and she wakes to find fairy dust sprinkled around the door and on her bed. It's looking forward to moments like these that make me so grateful to be a mamma, creating the magic of childhood.

One day, I'll teach Harper what my mom taught me. How when you go on walks in the forest you should stop along the way and build little houses out of twigs and leaves and rocks for fairies to sleep in at night. I can't wait for all the wonderment that I will get to experience again through our little baby's eyes. Now all she needs is to grow her first set of teeth!

Thursday, July 26, 2012

I've been coveting this dress from Anne Taylor Loft, but been hesitant to invest in it as I am still currently working off the baby weight. Why invest in a $90 dress that will hopefully be too large for me in the next few months?

But then it occurred to me that when I did lose the weight, it would be perfectly okay to have the dress taken in. Genius!

Still I felt guilty about the purchase....but then I got a raise at work and asked D if it would be okay to get it to reward myself. Also genius.

And then I checked my email this afternoon at work and saw that I had an email from ATL saying 50% off everything in the store until 7 PM. This was the last sign I needed, I went there after work, fought my way into a dressing room (flash sales are a little nutty), though I briefly considered just stripping in the middle of the store to try it on if I couldn't get a dressing room. All the good sizes were sold out, but luckily there was a size 6 on the mannequin (vanity size much?) and they took it off for me, it was a perfect fit and I then was free to claw my way to the looooong line at the register with my spoils and 30 minutes to spare.

I probably could have made a killing on other stuff, but I tried to stay focused like a laser beam and just come in for the dress and then get out with my wallet in tact. It pays to sign up for store mailing lists I suppose!

Sunday, July 22, 2012

I was lucky enough to head to Hillside Farmacy with my friend Christine and as we were noshing on lavender French macaroons (my macaroon mission will be posted in a different post completely, this is still a work in progress) she was saying how into lavender she said this summer. Which reminded me of my attempt to make Honey Lavender Ice Cream last summer. It turned out quite lovely, but my husband, not being partial to the taste of lavender in his food and my body not really being so good with the processing of glucose as of late, made making that ice cream a bit of a waste of time as far as future batches were concerned.

My mom got me a thing of lavender hand wash for my kitchen sink and I do like to smell my hands after washing them. Christine was saying she's been using a lavender spray this summer as a light fragrance. Our common enjoyment of lavender first caused me to try and pawn off some of the giant bag of culinary lavender I bought on Amazon (see below) to make that ice cream which I will now never use, on her. My next thought was, other than the obvious (sachets) how can I use it around the house?

Another gift I got from my mom is lavender linen spray from Crabtree and Evelyn. I will admit to spritzing our sheets with this stuff rather than changing the sheets once a week to buy us a few more nights until I get around to changing them (or as a stalling tactic until the maid comes and does it for me). You can also use it in your laundry steamer or to spritz your clothes as you iron them. But this stuff isn't cheap. It lasts me a very long time, but it's still around $18 and doesn't solve my lavender surplus issue and it's not really intended to spray on your skin.

So while I was shopping at Hobby Lobby for another project (painting a rug, whole other blog post) I picked up a spray bottle in the paint supply section for $1.50. I perused some YouTube videos, I saw some talk about using distilled water or vodka and steeping the lavender in it and it seemed like a waste of vodka/that I would end up smelling like a drunken hobo if I used those approaches. So with nothing to lose, I threw a handful of the dried lavender into a pint glass, filled it with water, and forgot about it for 2 hours.

Later that night I came into the kitchen to get a beer and remembered my little experiment. I strained the lavender out with a strainer and then ran it through a dish cloth to get out any fine particles. I filled my little bottle using a funnel I keep for cooking purposes. I think getting the organic matter out of the water is pretty important, otherwise I think it would start to smell rotten.

So there you have it, my bottle of homemade lavender water. My only complaint is that it's brown and I'm worried about it staining things, like say, a white blouse. But I'd use it on my brown sheets or dark colored clothing and came back from yoga this morning and spritzed myself in the sweaty face with it and it was rather refreshing. I think it would be nice to make up a few of these and put a fancy label on them and give them as hostess gifts, but I'm worried the brown color makes this a fairly undesirable gift. What do you think?

Other uses for culinary lavender include mixing some with your tea leaves. In 2007 I was in Sydney, Australia and sat down to tea at a delightful tea room and was served a mix of black tea and lavender. I've been searching all over for it since and the closest I've come is a blend of Earl Grey and lavender. I'm not a fan of Earl Grey, so I've been mixing some of the dried lavender in with my loose leaf English Breakfast and achieved a much more favorable result.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Remember how I frantically ordered that air purifier at 5 AM in a fit of desperation? Guess I should have checked the dimensions on that bad boy. It arrived on Wednesday and is roughly the size of R2-D2. No way I can fit that in our bedroom and now I have to pay $20 to ship it back to Amazon and buy a new one. Fail.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

2:00 AM Our air purifier's (i.e. the GREATEST WHITE NOISE MACHINE EV-ER) fan motor seizes up. It lasted 10 years, it's had a good run. I use Sleep Sheep instead which will run for a maximum of 43 minutes at a time.

3:30 AM D snores, I kick him. H fusses, but goes back to sleep. I get up and turn the Sleep Sheep back on.

4:00 AM H Fusses, I feed her again. I turn the Sleep Sheep on again.

5:00 AM H fusses, I curse the damned toy designer that made the sheep only stay on for 43 minutes. I go on Amazon.com and purchase a new air purifier. I curse the fact that I will have to make it through two more nights like this until the new air purifier arrives. I turn the damn sheep back on again.

6:00 AM The dogs bark to get their breakfasts. H shifts around. D gets up to let them out and feed them. I turn on the MOTHER EFFING SHEEP AGAIN.

7:00 AM I finally give up and wake up. Darryl blow dries his hair and packs for his business trip. H doesn't even stir or make a peep.

Who is Kelly?

Kelly is a twentysomething native Texan living in Austin, geologist, wife, owner of two badly behaved terriers. She enjoys cooking and gardening, though she is more skilled at the former than the latter. She is attempting to develop her writing skills, sense of style, and home decorating abilities, her experiments and inspiration are contained herein.